River Otters live in the Estero Americano. On my recent visit I saw six of them—five in one group and a solo Otter near Whale’s Tail. This one appeared to have caught a fish.

Four other otters were nearby. It wasn’t long before they saw me.

When they became aware of me they swam across the estuary to the opposite shore.

This is the group of four other otters nearby.

As I had noticed before on Tomales Bay, the otters swam toward the sun so that soon I was seeing their shadowed side.

Looking into the sun makes it harder to see and photograph them. I do not know if they swim toward the sun instinctively or whether they know that this behavior makes them harder to see. Perhaps it had simply been a coincidence that their “escape” from my attention in both cases required them to swim toward the sun.

One of them popped up to have a good look at me.

I think they eventually decided I was taking too much interest in their activities. One by one each of them climbed out of the water into some shoreline shrubbery, and disappeared.

Lots of deer are in the Estero Americano watershed in early November. The hunter and I had seen a number of deer running to escape coyotes. A couple of deer plunged into the water to swim to the other shore.

Looking through binoculars I spotted deer throughout the whole of Wednesday’s paddle. Most of the deer were outside handheld camera range.

But on the paddle back I got close enough to this pair of deer to pull out my camera and take some pictures.

Here’s the buck, zoomed in a bit.

These two stood stock still, as if they weren’t real deer at all, but as if they were made of fiberglass. Except for their heads and necks, which turned in perfect harmony to follow the passage of my boat.

Halfway out to the ocean the Estero widens. It was still calm when I got there. Quiet and peaceful. Good for the body and soul.

The familiar pair of Barn Owls—Barney and Betty—kept watch over this peaceful scene. They’ve presided over this stretch of water for some time now.

The hardly blinked an eye as a drifted past their cave in the wall of the hanging gardens. I saw this pair last May and again in July. To see more photos of these owls, click on those links. It was good to see them again.

There’s something about birds of prey that catch the eye.

Can anyone help identify this one? It appeared to be somewhat larger than a Red-Tailed Hawk, but it was pretty high in the sky, so hard to know exactly how big it really was.